Tacoma man charged in threats, suspected in financial fraud

Published 9:18 pm, Tuesday, May 20, 2014

A 21-year-old man accused of stirring “waves of terror” at a Seattle financial services firm within days of going to work there now faces felony charges.

King County prosecutors claim James A. Bea sent dozens of bomb threats to coworkers – most of whom he’d never met – along with personal details about them and photos of his brother, dead, in a coffin. Investigators contend Bea hoped to cast himself as the primary target of some creepily well-informed terrorist; he is also alleged to have used the threats to skip work.

Writing the court, Deputy Prosecutor Ian Ith described the threats as the “tip of an iceberg” of criminal conduct by Bea. Bea sent disturbingly graphic and threatening messages to many people, Ith said in court papers.

“This was no one-time whim,” the prosecutor said. “The defendant orchestrated a sophisticated, calculated scheme that delivered waves of terror for weeks, permeating a multi-state company and leaving many people fearful to come to work.”

Whether Bea was prepared to carry through on the threats remains an open question. What was clear to investigators, though, was that the threats ascribed to Bea left his now-former coworkers at Jack Henry & Associates terrified.

Seattle police first received word of the threats on April 10, when officers were called to the Missouri-based firm’s Olive Way offices following a string of bomb threats sent to employees’ personal mobile phones.

Each day, Jack Henry employees working across the country received texts claiming a bomb would be detonated in their offices. Workers in Florida, Texas and Missouri were threatened, as well as those in Seattle. The text messages had been disguised by the sender, who used several online services to hide their source.

Bea – who’d started working for the financial technology firm three days before the threats began – targeted himself in many of the threats, a Seattle bomb squad detective said in court papers. The detective said it appears Bea was trying to make himself look like the primary victim.

But Bea also included chilling personal details about several of his coworkers in the messages, the detective continued.

“I’ve watched you for the past 6 months,” Bea said in one, according to charging papers. “Where you work, which route you take home, where you grocery shop … where that pretty little girlfriend of yours works: need I go on?”

Bea is alleged to have sent himself a threatening message on April 15, and then used that threat as an excuse to skip work that day. In another concocted “exchange” with the bomber, Bea was defiant in the face of the bomb threat, the detective told the court.

“You’re not going to stop me from working and performing,” Bea said in a message to the “bomber,” according to charging papers.

Police ultimately traced the text messages back to Bea, who’d already been identified as a suspect earlier by company investigators, according to charging papers.

Writing the court, the detective said Bea is also suspected of stealing the credit card accounts of four Maine residents. Uncharged in the apparent fraud, Bea is suspected of purchasing thousands of dollars of merchandise on the accounts, then having the items shipped to his family’s Tacoma home.

Seattle police arrived to search that home on May 12. Arrested at the scene, Bea is alleged to have admitted sending the threatening text messages and stealing the credit card information from banks that hired Jack Henry to manage their financial software.

Bea has been charged with two counts of making threats to bomb. He remains jailed on $100,000 bail.